A Thousand Words
by Mousme
Summary: Lucas Barr's pictures speak more eloquently than he can.


Title: **A Thousand Words**

Prompt/Summary: Written for Challenge #3 **spn_las**. The prompt was "Who knew an Impala could fly?"

Characters: Lucas Barr

Rating: G

Wordcount: 681

Disclaimer: I was hoping for a discount on secondary characters, but it turns out it's a package deal.

Warnings: None.

Neurotic Author's Note #1: I am actually quite proud of this ficlet. I wasn't really inspired by the prompt at first, and so coming up with a new and interesting way in which to interpret it proved to be quite the challenge.

Neurotic Author's Note #2: I am also of the opinion that SPN's secondary characters sometimes get a bit neglected. I'm going to try to fix that.

* * *

Lucas likes to draw. He never did before, but he likes it now. Green army men line the edge of the table, stand guard while he pulls a red crayon carefully from the box. The other boys at school are rough with their crayons, pressing so hard the tips go dull, or the whole crayon snaps in half. Lucas likes his crayons to stay sharp, and so he turns them around as he colours, keeping the tip pointy. Mom says she's going to buy him the biggest box of crayons in the whole store, thirty-six different colours.

Pictures are the only thing that make sense in his life now. He likes the straight lines, the bright colours. He dreams about the boy in the lake, hears his whispers all day and all night. _Come play with me_... The boy in the lake took his Daddy, wants to take him too. Fear sits heavy on Lucas' chest, making it hard to breathe, making it impossible to speak. He sits on the floor in his room and draws swirling pictures of the boy's home, the black whirlpool at the bottom of the lake. Lucas doesn't like those drawings. The boy in the lake has a shiny red bicycle and a pretty house, and so he draws those instead. Sometimes he gets the feeling that the boy likes it when he draws those things, like they remind him of when he used to be happy and had friends to play with.

He draws a picture for the tall man who comes to sit with him. He's big and strong, younger than Lucas' Daddy, but still old. He sits with Lucas and draws a picture of his own family, of his little brother Sammy who's taller than he is now and who's being nice to his Mom. It's polite to give a picture back when someone draws you a picture —Mrs. Merritt from kindergarten taught them that— and he likes the man. Dean. No one's ever sat down to draw with him before, not even Mom, although she always gives him as much paper and as many crayons as he wants. Dean tells him about his own Mom, crouching next to him, and Lucas finds it hard to believe that a guy as big and strong as Dean isn't always brave. But he listens, and when Dean asks him to help, he wants to. He wants to help, because if he helps then he won't have to be afraid anymore.

The boy in the lake calls to him, pulls him into the water. It's only cold for a minute, and then the boy is gone, and so is Grampa, and Mom is crying and hugging him, and he can taste silt and lake water on his tongue. The boy in the lake is gone, and the terror has gone with him. Lucas whispers all the things in Mom's ear that he's wanted to say, and she smiles and laughs even though she's sad about Daddy and Grampa, and for now it's enough.

Long after Dean has gone, taking his Sammy with him, Lucas still thinks about him. He still draws pictures of the lake, of big men diving in and saving people who are drowning there. One day he pulls out his black crayon, the one most worn down by use, when he was still trying to draw the boy's home at the bottom of the lake. The tip is still sharp, which is good, because he needs it sharp to draw the precise lines of the big black car. He spends a long time on the picture, because it needs to be just exactly right. The green army men watch from the crow's nest on the windowsill in his room. When he's done, Mom pins the picture up on the refrigerator and steps back to admire it.

"I never knew Sam and Dean's car could fly," she says with a small smile.

Lucas just shrugs, and doesn't bother correcting her. She'll be happier if she never knows how fast they're really falling.


End file.
